Orbit lines to have 'depth' perception.

[Happy Shrapnel]

The Orbit lines are those circular lines around suns, planets, stations that denote its orbit and to its gravitational effect (albeit small) are quite helpful, but what would make them really helpful would if they could represent the bodies position.

e.g when you're in supercruise and approaching an orbiting station or body you can tell if the station/body is on the far side or near side of the main body its orbiting around. A simple graduation of the luminosity of the line, brighter would be closer, dimmer would be further away.

 

[Wedgetail]

Don't you sorta get that already on the target bracket? i.e. when your selected body is behind another body it changes to a dashed line rather than an unbroken one

 

[Titus Balls]

Don't you sorta get that already on the target bracket? i.e. when your selected body is behind another body it changes to a dashed line rather than an unbroken one

Yes... and no.

I know that OP means, sometimes the orbit lines at certain angles can still be highly confusing. Also quite frankly orbit lines looks like debug lines rather than a spaceship UI.

 

[Happy Shrapnel]

Sort of yes, but you have to be close enough for that effect to show. What I'm describing is a way to see if the Station/Body is on the far side or near side of the main body it orbits from a distance where neither is more than a 'dot'. Knowing that info would help in faster docking as knowing if you're gonna transverse across the inner side of the main body (between planet and station) or are approaching the station from behind.

 

[Alec Turner]

Yup - I have the same "issue". Basically when I'm racing I want to have the planet between me and the station so I can skim past it and take advantage of the "planetary braking". My approaches currently involve a corkscrew approach while I try to figure out where the planet sits in relation to the station (which you can eventually figure out by the way the two start to move in relation to each other). However - I've had something of a revelation with the new HUD station display which now shows the correct orientation of the station (and it's mailslot). Basically, when you're still a long way off, since the station entrance roughly faces the planet, if you can see then entrance facing you on the HUD then you know you're approaching from the far side of the planet! This doesn't help when your destination is a landable planet (back to the corkscrew) but it sure does for stations.

 

[Happy Shrapnel]

...and that's what I'm on about. Simply making the orbit lines have a perspective would sort this. currently the orbit lines are nothing more than consistently solid single pixel width lines. would adding an in-game option to turn on 3D orbit lines be something worth while? I think so. nothing elaborate, either orbit lines that are slightly thicker on the 'closer to you' side and thinner on the far side, or perhaps a gradation filter (brighter closer to you, darker further away)

 

[Alec Turner]

...and that's what I'm on about. Simply making the orbit lines have a perspective would sort this. currently the orbit lines are nothing more than consistently solid single pixel width lines. would adding an in-game option to turn on 3D orbit lines be something worth while? I think so. nothing elaborate, either orbit lines that are slightly thicker on the 'closer to you' side and thinner on the far side, or perhaps a gradation filter (brighter closer to you, darker further away)

I concur - this would be ace. Add it to the list FD!

 

[disorganise]

+1 and whilst we're at it, why not add direction of body travel?

 

[Dahill]

I agree with an overhaul of these lines. I like that they are unobtrusive right now, but they look terrible overall. I used to be a huge proponent of leaving them on during SC but have recently become overwhelmed by the jagged edge to them all. They are really helpful for avoiding getting too close to the star, but they are not intuitive enough to come and go as needed. I like the OP suggestion of a transitioning orbit line. I would add that the star warning should fade into​ view on approach to the drop zone with a warning (bright red comes to mind, possibly another color for the optimal scoop zone). Overall​ I love the HUD and the features associated with it, but these seem half baked...

 

[Farmboy]

I'd suggest slightly different colours for orbit lines nearer you than further from you, rather than a thickening of the lines. Being able to tell if a station is on the near or far part of an orbit from further out by this indicator would be helpful.

 

[FrogsFriend]

Doesn't a glance at the Nav panel tell you if one is closer than the other?

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

The Orbit lines are those circular lines around suns, planets, stations that denote its orbit and to its gravitational effect (albeit small) are quite helpful, but what would make them really helpful would if they could represent the bodies position.

e.g when you're in supercruise and approaching an orbiting station or body you can tell if the station/body is on the far side or near side of the main body its orbiting around. A simple graduation of the luminosity of the line, brighter would be closer, dimmer would be further away.

Could you give us an image (I'm lazy ) I have a super simple idea for a HUD improvement that might hep with that

NVM.... This is the idea... Killing 2 rabits with one stone anyway

Arrow always shows up in the closest orbit position.

Arrow points towards the orbit direction of the station/body

Can i have a cookie?

 

[TopCat160]

...and that's what I'm on about. Simply making the orbit lines have a perspective would sort this. currently the orbit lines are nothing more than consistently solid single pixel width lines. would adding an in-game option to turn on 3D orbit lines be something worth while? I think so. nothing elaborate, either orbit lines that are slightly thicker on the 'closer to you' side and thinner on the far side, or perhaps a gradation filter (brighter closer to you, darker further away)

I've been thinking of mentioning exactly this for ages, kudos!

The optical illusion from far away, where you can't tell whether you're above or below the plane of the orbit, has always driven me slightly insane. As you say, slightly thicker or brighter on the closer side would be great.

As it is, I usually fly well below (or above, can't tell which) the plane, and when I know, I turn to approach at right angles to the orbit plane. A bit naff, but it works.

- - - Updated - - -

I would like this too but I'm afraid it's an optimization issue. Calculating hidden lines which would be needed for your simple sounding "simple graduation of the luminosity of the line, brighter would be closer, dimmer would be further away") doesn't come for free. If you take into account that some systems are full of orbital lines then that's probably not quite as trivial as you might think.

Even doing it just for the orbit line for the orbit your targeted body is in would be a big improvement on what we have.

If you're not going there, it doesn't matter so much.

- - - Updated - - -

Arrow always shows up in the closest orbit position.

Arrow points towards the orbit direction of the station/body

Not bad at all, though it could get lost in the background quite easily. Might well do the job. +1

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

I'm not a developer and guess only one of the devs can tell how much impact on performance this would have. I could imagine that they struggle with every little bit to squeeze out a few more FPS. Might not be much but I could imagine that's similar with building an ultra-light bike were you struggle with a few grams (and pay a ridiculous sum for it) which looks negligible on that part alone but many lightweight parts on your bike will make the difference.



Don't think that just because the presentation looks simple the underlying calculation is as well. The program still need to know (calculate!) what part of the line is in front which I would think is the expensive part.

But then (again) I'm no programmer and perhaps I'm just overestimating the needed CPU cycles.

Well if you create an orbit line some part of it already draw it's position... lets say an array of [center position , XYZ Rotation, and a radius] (ther may be more like oval shapes) The game would only need to get a closer to the player position that same radius and rotation. OFC being on higher than 60° inclination should disable this feature since it's useless on this situation.

 

[Alec Turner]

Well if you create an orbit line some part of it already draw it's position... lets say an array of [center position , XYZ Rotation, and a radius] (ther may be more like oval shapes) The game would only need to get a closer to the player position that same radius and rotation. OFC being on higher than 60° inclination should disable this feature since it's useless on this situation.

It occurs to me that drawing the orbit lines closer to you thicker than those further away ought to come for free. They'll be drawing the orbit lines as a circle in 3D space using some underling 3D rendering library that will already be coping with things like perspective from the camera's point of view. So if they "just" make the circle outline be the on-screen equivalent of 3 or 4 pixels thick then it should naturally end up with the distant half of the circle only appearing as say 1 pixel thick with the nearer half appearing about 5 pixels thick.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

It occurs to me that drawing the orbit lines closer to you thicker than those further away ought to come for free. They'll be drawing the orbit lines as a circle in 3D space using some underling 3D rendering library that will already be coping with things like perspective from the camera's point of view. So if they "just" make the circle outline be the on-screen equivalent of 3 or 4 pixels thick then it should naturally end up with the distant half of the circle only appearing as say 1 pixel thick with the nearer half appearing about 5 pixels thick.

It would still need to have the same method , cause the line drawing will still need to locate your position against the planet center, because it's not just perspective, it's FAKE perspective, it need to be done by the HUD to give you the idea of perspective anyway. I understand what you want to make but i think problems might ocur in standard scenarios for example when youre close to drop this line could be too thick? when you're inside the circle it may block some of the game view? That's why i like minimalist design the arrow shows 2 things by a draw of a line. Wont be covering anything and you'd get 4 or 5 pixels more on your screen to get a new QOL feature for your ship.

Anyway I might be thinking wrong... but this kind of stuff is always better drawn to explain anyway...


another detail that this minimalist idea of mine can help... while inside the ring, you'd have the position marked that is also the closest to the outer side, so this means that this also can work as a tip to where is faster to exit accelerate on supercruise 9when you're aligned to the orbit OFC!

 

[Happy Shrapnel]

I would like this too but I'm afraid it's an optimization issue. Calculating hidden lines which would be needed for your simple sounding "simple graduation of the luminosity of the line, brighter would be closer, dimmer would be further away") doesn't come for free. If you take into account that some systems are full of orbital lines then that's probably not quite as trivial as you might think.

if the client can handle a full scale 3d rendered multiplayer battle, it can spare a few clock cycles to enable this.

 

[Happy Shrapnel]

So you didn't understand my example about ultra light weight bikes? For starters: It's the plethora of small little things that can drive a program to it's knees. Since none of us two are involved in optimizing the code we both can't know for sure how trivial it's actually are. It's all down to wild guessing.

Another example. I said I'm no programmer but in my youth I fiddled with certain freeware graphic engines and was impressed who fast they seem to be - until I realized that there was still no collision detection implemented. I'd think hidden line routines fall into a similar departure. That's something so many people, even today, fall for when they see some 'impressive' alpha videos of early games. It 'looks' good and fast but once all the stuff is in that the game would need the whole glance falls apart in no time.

In this case it would be the GPU btw (not CPU) that would calculate this but even the most powerful GPU has its limits. You can't just add more and more little things like that without taking these limits into account. At this point it comes all down to priorities and I'm not sure how high this one is on the list.

Remember, what I'm suggesting will only be visible in SC, you know, that part of the game that does very very little in the way rendering. Suns, planets, comet-like-things-with-badly-animated-tails-representing-other-space-craft, and those damned one dimensional ORBIT LINES..... You cant even SHOOT in that mode!! Even a 30 year old BBC B with heavy shopping could cope with that.

 

[Happy Shrapnel]

Fair point. Makes me wonder why it's not implemented then. I don't know the answer, only the devs would know. For now we can only speculate. We don't know what they probably have in mind with SC in the future. Another possible reason could be that some players report stuttering in SC which they probably want to nail down before adding some new features.

Have it as an option in the ....errmm, Options.

 

[NW3]

I would like this too but I'm afraid it's an optimization issue. Calculating hidden lines which would be needed for your simple sounding "simple graduation of the luminosity of the line, brighter would be closer, dimmer would be further away") doesn't come for free. If you take into account that some systems are full of orbital lines then that's probably not quite as trivial as you might think.

I'm not sure of the difficulty of doing this in Direct-X, but it's trivial to vary the line color in OpenGL. There's a way for distance to modify the line color on a pixel-by-pixel basis (essentially drawing the line as if there is a "black fog" applied).